50 Years: Sharon Couch's Excellence On And Off The Track

by Dave Lohse
UNC Associate Sports Information Director, Retired

Sharon Couch made her mark by excelling at firsts—both in competition and in her professional career.

Her athletic career at the University of North Carolina was distinguished; she was the first-ever African American woman to win the Patterson Medal as Carolina's outstanding senior athlete in 1991. After Carolina, she was selected to the United States Olympic women's track and field teams in 1992 and 2000.

"My story is an unlikely one, and UNC helped me develop a vision rising from being a little girl living on a dirt road in Rice, Va., to pursuing greater paths," said Couch.  "Growing up not being exposed to much else but understanding that education and sports was the path out into the bigger world was clear."

Recruited to Chapel Hill and coached by the late legendary athletics mentor Dennis Craddock, Couch was a key part of a golden era of women's track and field at the University, competing on teams that excelled at incredibly high levels in ACC and NCAA competitions.

"Being recruited as a franchise athlete changed everything for me," she said. "When Coach Dennis Craddock came to see me, I was the No. 1 ranked kid in the country in the long jump and hurdles and the only one in my high school senior class to go out of state to college. Coach Craddock made it clear he saw me as a team leader, a point scorer and a championship event winner."

Couch has accomplished so much in her professional life. She recently completed her Ph.D. degree in sports psychology at the University of Tennessee, defending her dissertation last March and being ceremoniously hooded in May. She was the first the first African American woman to earn that advanced degree at UT -- another first.

That's no surprise given her athletic accomplishments at Carolina from 1987 to 1991, where she completed her Carolina degree in speech communications in the spring of 1991.

In her four seasons of indoor and outdoor competition as a Tar Heel, Couch won eight individual Atlantic Coast Conference titles and led the UNC team to seven successive league championships. Couch won honors as the outstanding performer at three ACC championship meets and qualified for a combined eight indoor and outdoor NCAA meets.

"Being a Carolina girl and being in a championship-winning program, the athletes in the 1991 class made a claim for what we wanted to do," she said. "We won seven straight championships in the league. We trained to win in the classroom and on the track in every way possible. We had so much pride in being a winning team."

Couch has positive memories of her 1991 classmates – Kendra Mackey, Sonya Thomas and Tamesa Richmond – who composed the squad's 4x100 meter relay team.  All were recruited by Craddock as a foundation for Carolina's championship efforts.

"Coach Craddock was the master builder. He started building our program the second he hit campus," she said. "He was very intentional on how he built the team and how we treated each other."

A five-time collegiate All-America and four-time team captain, Couch became the first UNC female athlete to earn an Olympic track and field berth when she competed in the 1992 games in Barcelona in her specialty, the long jump.

"As a freshman I knew what the expectations were for me in this program and it was not even a thought to me when I graduated that I would not go and try to make Olympic team," Couch said.

After graduating, she lived in Cary, N.C., and commuted to Chapel Hill while training to earn her Olympic berth in '92. She missed an Olympic berth in Atlanta by just one spot but persevered and was back on the Olympic stage in 2000 in Sydney when she qualified for the semifinals in the 100-meter hurdles.

In addition to competing at the Olympics twice, Couch was a member of five U.S. teams at World Championships while competing as a professional long jumper and sprint hurdler. Altogether, her professional career lasted 11 years.

After her professional athletics career, Couch pursued business careers with Kraft General Foods, Franklin Covey, Quest Communications and Masai Barefoot Technology before returning to a career with her true love – athletics, and specifically, track and field.

Couch coached track and field at Tennessee after her arrival in Knoxville in 2010 while working in an academic support role in the Volunteers' athletic department.

After a UT coaching change on the track, she decided to stay in Knoxville to raise her two sons and pursue her advanced degrees, earning her master's degree from UT in sports psychology in May 2016, focusing on underserved populations and places for Black females.

That master's degree opened a door for Couch's career at UT, working as an academic advisor in the University's College of Education, Health and Human Services before moving in 2018 to become director of student life and diversity programs in UT's Herbert College of Agriculture.
Couch also served as chair of the Tennessee Commission for Blacks, an appointment she received from the UT chancellor.

Always striving to learn, she started her next degree, a Ph.D., focusing her work on motor behavior while working full time as a Senior Learning Consultant in the university system in Knoxville.

Couch completed that Ph.D. this past spring—another milestone and another first in a long line of accomplishments.

A model athlete and academic, Couch has many firsts and many accomplishments to her name:  conference champion, Olympian, academic professional, Ph.D. But none more important than the fact that she is an outstanding human being and a Tar Heel legend.

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